TNT Colloquium: Event-by-event pre-equilibrium dynamics in high-energy heavy-ion collisions [Duke]

We develop a macroscopic description of the space-time evolution of the Quark-Gluon plasma (QGP) during the pre-equilibrium stage of a high-energy heavy-ion collision. Based on an effective kinetic description of the microscopic equilibration process, we calculate the non-equilibrium evolution of the local background energy-momentum tensor as well as the non-equilibrium linear response to transverse energy and momentum perturbations for realistic boost- invariant initial conditions for heavy ion collisions. We demonstrate how this framework can be used on an event-by-event basis to propagate the energy momentum tensor from far-from-equilibrium initial state models, e.g. IP-Glasma, to the time ¿hydro¿hydrowhen the system is well described by relativistic viscous hydrodynamics.